The Last Inch

Ben was forty-three. His wife went back to the USA and led the life she liked. He had to join her before the summer but he knew he could never get another flying job at his age not only in the USA but even in Canada. So Ben had to work as a pilot in Egypt.

He had a boy. His boy, Davy, was ten years old. At ten Davy already understood that his mother had no interest in him, and that his father was a stranger who couldn't talk to him and was too sharp with him when they were together, and they were seldom together.

Ben had the boy with him in the plane when they were over the Red Sea coast.

«Are you afraid? »

«A little, » the boy answered. He had rather a shy and serious voice for a North-American boy.

Davy was airsick, and Ben was sorry that his son was with him.

Once Ben showed the boy how to fly a plane. Davy understood everything well enough, but when his father corrected his mistakes loudly in the training plane, the boy began to cry.

« Don't cry Ben told him now. «There is no need to cry. Get your head up, Davy! Get it up! »

Davy kept his head down, and Ben was all the more sorry that Davy was with him. He watched the Red Sea coast, this line a thousand miles long that divided the deserts from the green seas. It was lifeless and dead.

«Look attentively, he told Davy, «if you want to see how to put the plane down».

He knew how sharp his own voice could be; but it surprised him that he hardly knew how else to speak to the boy. Davy's head came up. He looked attentively.

«How do you know where the wind is? » the boy asked.

Tom Whitewashes His Aunt's Fence After Mark Twain

On Saturday morning the summer weather was bright and fresh and full of life. There was a song in everybody's heart and if the heart was young, music came to the lips. Everybody's face smiled and it was so nice to walk. The locust trees were in bloom and the smell of the flowers filled the air. In such a morning Tom came out on the sidewalk with a bucket of whitewash and a brush with a long handle. He looked at the fence, and all the gladness left his face, and he became sad. Thirty yards of broad fence, nine feet high. He was sorry for himself and thought that his life was very difficult. He dipped his brush and whitewashed the highest board; then he repeated the action; did it again; looked at the small piece of board that he whitewashed, and sat down on a box.

Jim, the Negro boy, came jumping out of the gate with a water bucket and singing a song. Tom always disliked to bring water from the town pump, but now he did not think so. He remembered that there were always white, mulatto and Negro boys and girls at the pump waiting for their turn, resting, playing, quarrelling or fighting.

Say, Jim, I'll fetch the water if you whitewash.

Jim shook his head and said:

«I can't, Master Tom. Old Mrs. told me to get the water quick and don't stop with anybody.

«Oh, never mind what she said, Jim, she always talks. Give me the bucket I'll be back in a minute. She will not find out».

«Oh, I am afraid, Master Tom, the old Mrs. will feather me. Honestly I am afraid».

«She! She never beats anybody. She hits them over the head with her thimble, who is afraid of that. She talks awful, but talk doesn't hurt. Jim, I'll give you a marble.